I liked some of RPM's moments.
[...]
-Trying to explain some of it's Sentai counterparts ideas.

Click to expand...

Like what?

Honestly, I do plan on checking out some of RPM on DVD, but it looks like they've only released 2 volumes of it. That's a total of, what, 10-12 episodes. Hardly a complete series or even all of Guzelian's run.

I liked some of RPM's moments.
[...]
-Trying to explain some of it's Sentai counterparts ideas.

Click to expand...

Like what?

Click to expand...

Well, beyond the generic Sentai tropes, there's the fact that Go-onger, the basis for RPM, was profoundly different in tone. Whereas RPM was the darkest and most mature Power Rangers season, Go-onger was one of the goofiest Super Sentai seasons. The giant robots were sentient vehicle-animal hybrids from another dimension, with googly-eyed designs based on Disney's Cars. RPM had to carve away as much of the original footage as possible to avoid the silly stuff, and even then they had to contend with rationalizing, or at least lampshading, the designs.

It's at times like this that I realise how talented the writers for 'Rangers' are, to take footage from a silly aintentionally campy kids show and try and turn it into a darker-er more mature-ish series must take some talent. All I'd probably end up doing would be re-dubbing it and recasting the actors.

I also enjoyed watching the stunt footage; it was entertaining watching athletically gifted people demonstrate their skills.

Click to expand...

After giving up at the start of Turbo, this is what got me back, specifically Ninja Storm. I know you weren't a fan of the show, but I wasn't looking for much depth when I came across it, since it was Power Rangers. Rather, I liked that the fight choreography was much faster, that hand movements (blocks, parries, punches, etc) were emphasized a lot more, and that superpowers were used far more often than they were before. It could have been a side effect of how Hollywood was adopting a more East Asian attitude towards fight scenes (American fight scenes used to serve only plot purposes, but Wuxia fight scenes serve to show off physicality, fluidity, and beauty) thanks to the Matrix and Crouching Tiger, but to see that attitude adopted much more deliberately for Power Rangers was such a nice twist to see. Doubly so since in the past, little actual martial arts were used; kicks were just kicks, they weren't really patterned after specific styles, for example. Fight scenes of the past seemed clunky and unappealing, but NS' fight scenes seemed terrifically modern and hyperkinetic.

Story aside, my one complaint about NS was its legacy: it made sense for our heroes to have non-Ranger powers in civilian mode. They're studying exaggerated takes on traditional ninja abilities with a magical bent. However, each season after that, every Ranger team had to have civilian powers, and each reason became more convoluted and forced, such as mutantcy. The only one that really made sense theme wise was Mystic Force, for obvious reasons. (the two exceptions: Tommy and Adam holding their own with their superpowered successors, despite not having any real offensive powers themselves! Skill and experience over gimmicks)

It's at times like this that I realise how talented the writers for 'Rangers' are, to take footage from a silly aintentionally campy kids show and try and turn it into a darker-er more mature-ish series must take some talent.

Click to expand...

Actually it's usually been the other way around. For the most part, Super Sentai has tended to be more serious and sophisticated than its Power Rangers adaptations. Certainly a lot more violent, without the whitewashing and avoidance of death that's usually mandatory in US kidvid. But over the years, the PR franchise has evolved to be more and more like the SS franchise, and perhaps there's been some reciprocal influence as well. Go-onger was unusual in adopting a more juvenile, comical style, and conversely RPM was exceptional in how dark and sophisticated it was for a PR season.

And as I said, mainly the way RPM managed was by using as little Go-onger footage as they could get away with.

All I'd probably end up doing would be re-dubbing it and recasting the actors.

Click to expand...

To some extent, that's what the Wild Force season did, in a way. Usually the PR storylines are very different from the corresponding SS storylines, but WF was an almost beat-for-beat remake, the only major differences being the identities/storylines of the Red Ranger and the archvillain. Some seasons have adapted parts of the storyline fairly closely (like the Magna Defender storyline in Lost Galaxy) and gone in a very different direction otherwise (like setting LG on a space colony ship instead of Earth, and using original villains for most of the season).

After giving up at the start of Turbo, this is what got me back, specifically Ninja Storm. I know you weren't a fan of the show, but I wasn't looking for much depth when I came across it, since it was Power Rangers. Rather, I liked that the fight choreography was much faster, that hand movements (blocks, parries, punches, etc) were emphasized a lot more, and that superpowers were used far more often than they were before. It could have been a side effect of how Hollywood was adopting a more East Asian attitude towards fight scenes (American fight scenes used to serve only plot purposes, but Wuxia fight scenes serve to show off physicality, fluidity, and beauty) thanks to the Matrix and Crouching Tiger, but to see that attitude adopted much more deliberately for Power Rangers was such a nice twist to see. Doubly so since in the past, little actual martial arts were used; kicks were just kicks, they weren't really patterned after specific styles, for example. Fight scenes of the past seemed clunky and unappealing, but NS' fight scenes seemed terrifically modern and hyperkinetic.

Click to expand...

I quite liked the action sequences in the early seasons. Walter Jones certainly used a distinctive style (called "hip-hopkido," kind of a capoeira variant) in his fight scenes, and it was damned impressive to watch.

What I liked about the original cast was that they clearly did their own stunts. That was something that happened less as time went on, as new cast members were hired more just as actors with doubles doing the bulk of the stunt work. I didn't find that as impressive.

Story aside, my one complaint about NS was its legacy: it made sense for our heroes to have non-Ranger powers in civilian mode. They're studying exaggerated takes on traditional ninja abilities with a magical bent. However, each season after that, every Ranger team had to have civilian powers, and each reason became more convoluted and forced, such as mutantcy. The only one that really made sense theme wise was Mystic Force, for obvious reasons.

Click to expand...

Again, though, I like it when the cast members are shown in action out of costume, where you can see the actors themselves performing the stunts. So I like the idea of giving the Rangers "civilian" powers, and regret that the use of such powers generally fizzled out after the first few episodes.

I think the powers in Jungle Fury made as much sense as in Ninja Storm, for much the same reason. The idea in JF was that they were tapping on the animal spirits within themselves, as an outgrowth of their martial-arts training. Indeed, their Ranger powers were presented as an extension of their inherent chi powers.

While I can understand not wanting to show people dying on an American kids show, I was always annoyed when they would say "destroy" instead of "kill." I admit, I was somewhat older than the show's target audience, but still, on a show that's all about ninjas & monsters kicking the crap out of each other, you'd think that the monsters' intentions to kill the Power Rangers would be so obvious that even the youngest viewers could understand them. So many kids shows are about one character putting another character in mortal danger. What about Tom & Jerry, Sylvester & Tweety, Wile E. Coyote & the Roadrunner?

While ABC is cancelling Power Rangers, what about the original Japanese source material? Are they still making Sentai series in Japan?

Random musings & memories about the toys:

I wish they did action figures of the Rangers in their civilian clothes. Micro Machines did tiny civilian versions of the original Rangers. Then there were the auto-Morphin' Rangers that had them in costume but without their helmets. But they never did regular 5" figures of the Rangers in their civilian clothes and they even stopped doing the auto-Morphin' figures after Turbo.

Ban-Dai was also really bad about doing action figures for the big bads. They never did a 5" Rita Repulsa, even though they had 5" figures of Lord Zedd, Goldar, Rito Revolto, & Master Vile. I think they did do a 5" Divatox but she was really hard to find. I don't think they ever did a 5" Astronema. And other than the Cogs, they never did any of the regular villains from Zeo--no King Mondo, Queen Machina, Prince Sprocket, Clank, Orbus, Prince Gasket, or Archerina. The only Zeo bad guys they did were random monsters of the week.

In a way, it was apt that, in "Forever Red," the surviving generals of the Machine Empire were mostly reused Beetleborgs costumes. Since they never did any 5" figures of the regular Zeo bad guys, we always used to use Beetleborgs as the big bads during that era (or occasionally characters from Spawn). (I think, at one point, we even had Billy go dark side, and become the new leader of the Machine Empire.)

None of which mattered, because this year, Chip crowed, the Sentai has given us everything we could ask for! Have you seen these early pictures? The robots are spaceships? They ride fling jet-things! My god- we can turn this series into a war in space with no effort at all, and tie off everything perfectly! The Sentai had handed them everything they ever wanted, the Rangers were high schoolers, just like PR had always done, and they had a team of EVIL RANGERS to fight, the plot PR had wanted to do for 6 years!

...and then he saw the actual episodes.
"What do you mean they never go to space?"
Megaranger, touted as a 'Space Sentai,' was actually video-game themed. They never left Earth, their ship was in orbit, it just flew down to Earth for the fights. There was no footage of the ships sailing the stars, no alien landscapes or monsters, no... SPACE at all from the Sentai that was destined to be 'Power Rangers in Space.'

While I can understand not wanting to show people dying on an American kids show, I was always annoyed when they would say "destroy" instead of "kill."

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's been part of the bizarre rules of US kidvid censors for decades. Nobody can say "kill," "dead," "death," "dying," or anything like that; it has to be "destroy," "eradicate," "annihilate," "eliminate," etc.

While ABC is cancelling Power Rangers, what about the original Japanese source material? Are they still making Sentai series in Japan?

Click to expand...

They were making Super Sentai for fifteen years before Power Rangers came along. I think it's kind of a tradition by now.

Fascinating. I always figured the switch to the Sentai approach of changing the cast each year was Lynn's doing; since he took the show in a more sophisticated direction like the Sentais, I figured he was generally trying to emulate their approach. And there's a lot more I didn't know about the process.

I've just been watching the video history of Power Rangers at Atop the Fourth Wall. http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/search/label/HOPR
It's interesting stuff, particularly the sincere affection with which he approaches Bulk & Skull. But so far, the funniest part of his review is the fever pitch to which his ranting ascends at the end of Part 1 of his Turbo review, pointing out all of the absurdities of the early series, like Lt. Stone taking over Ernie's Juice Bar, incompetant Elgar getting all sorts of important assignments, Divatox's easily defused detonators, Alpha 6's jive-ass voice, and Demetria's infuriating only-talks-in-questions quirk.

EDIT: Although, I do have to vehemently disagree with him about Divatox. True, she's not as menacing as Lord Zedd or even King Mondo, but she was a hell of a lot more interesting than the Machine Empire. Turbo has an element of comfortable resignation to it. While the villains lacked menace, I don't think the show really wanted them to be menacing. It's like they said, "You know what, we've been on the air for 5 years now. Our viewers know what the formula is. They know that, outside of the occasional apocalyptic 2-parter, the bad guys will never win. And considering the monsters-of-the-week are the only ones that do any fighting, we need to do something different with the big bad to make her interesting." Scenery chewing is such an important part of melodrama, and Divatox could chew scenery like nobody's business. Plus, when done right, if you usually play a villain for laughs, it can make them that much more frightening when they do start accomplishing some hardcore villainy. (I feel the same way about Gene Hackman's portrayal of Lex Luthor in Superman: The Movie.)

But my point is that Super Sentai got along for half its existence without there being such a thing as Power Rangers, so there's no reason to believe that its viability in Japan would be affected by what happens to its American adaptation.

Besides, Law & Order isn't co-produced by a toy company. As long as Japanese kids (and adults?) keep wanting to buy new Sentai toys, Bandai and Toei should be able to afford to keep making the series.

But my point is that Super Sentai got along for half its existence without there being such a thing as Power Rangers, so there's no reason to believe that its viability in Japan would be affected by what happens to its American adaptation.

Click to expand...

Well, no, obviously. But not knowing the current state of Sentai, I wasn't sure if, perhaps, ABC's decision came from a new lack of Sentai footage or something.

BTW, when Saban takes over the series again, I'd like to see them release a new, complete soundtrack album. There were a bunch of great songs that never made it to CD. I'm especially fond of the Piranhatron's theme. Plus, the Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie soundtrack is out of print & expensive.

Well, no, obviously. But not knowing the current state of Sentai, I wasn't sure if, perhaps, ABC's decision came from a new lack of Sentai footage or something.

Click to expand...

Oh, okay. Well, Super Sentai is still going strong; they're already into their second season post-Go-onger. ABC/Disney's decision to end PR was due to purely domestic factors such as ratings. As suggested above, it may have something to do with Disney's merger with Marvel, giving them ownership of another action franchise with which to cater to the young male market, so that they didn't need Power Rangers anymore.